NOVEMBER 24, 1997:One Night Stand, director Mike Figgis follow-up to his
acclaimed previous picture Leaving Las Vegas, fails and fails
badly. What promises to be at the very least titillating, with
its storyline involving infidelity, turns out to be a yawn.

It opens with Wesley Snipes, playing successful L.A.
TV-commercial director Max Carlyle, explaining documentary-style
to the camera why he happens to be in New York. Hes there
for work and, he says, to visit, his estranged friend Charlie
(Robert Downey Jr.) who hes just learned has HIV.
Circumstances cause him to miss his plane, so he takes in a
concert with a new acquaintance named
Karen (Nastassja Kinski). After Max saves Karen from being mugged, she falls into his arms, and together, they both commit adultery.

Back in L.A., Max rejoins his life of shooting highly pretentious
commercials and bickering with his wife (Ming-Na Wen) over his
holier-than-thou posing and his low sex drive. A year later,
hes back in New York to visit Charlie, now in a hospital
weeks away from dying. There, he stumbles into Karen again. It
turns out shes Charlies sister-in-law.

Where Figgis rattled emotions with Leaving Las Vegas, he can
barely get a pulse reading with One Night Stand. There are some
tense moments that make Max sweat. When he returns to L.A.
unshowered after his tryst, the family dog sniffs at his lap, and
when Karen and his wife meet over Charlies hospital bed, he
shifts nervously. But these instances exist within a lot of
padding  scenes of dinner parties, bedside celebrations for
Charlie, professional squabbling between Max and his boss 
so that the core of what this movie is supposed to be about gets
buried. What drives Karen and Max to cheat? The answer is simple:
theyre in the same room, theyve got some energy to
burn from the stress of the mugging, and its way too late
for anything good to be on television. And what are the
consequences? Save for a few caught-with-your-pants-down moments,
the players are kept from anything too sticky. In fact, One Night
Stand may possess one of the lousiest payoffs in recent movie
history.

Wesley Snipes in Mike Figgis' One Night Stand

The actors are cast out with nothing to hang onto. Some muddle
through it better than others. Snipes bears it out as best as he
can, feeling his way as he goes, as if he cant entirely get
comfortable in this character. Kinski, for her part, is
especially remote, like shes acting behind a scrim, which
seems to be evidence that her character  a rocket
scientist, no less  wasnt fully developed. Wen throws
a little oomph behind her small role with her false giggles and
bad jokes. The actor who really gets a beating is Robert Downey
Jr., who spends most of his screentime gasping behind an oxygen
mask. This appears to be his punishment for behaving so badly in
the past. He must serve as the dying man who imparts wisdom, the
raspier its delivered the better. Life is an
orange, he tells Max. What does it mean? Like the rest of
One Night Stand, it means nothing at all.

The Ice Storm is set in 1973 in New Canaan, Connecticut. In
looking back, director Ang Lee (Sense and Sensibility), working from Rich Moodys novel, conjures up a miserable time. Nixon is going down, the hairstyles and clothing are ugly, and the mood
of the period is one of distracted dissatisfaction.

In the center of the film are two families: the Hoods and their
neighbors, the Carvers. Ben Hood (Kevin Kline) is having an affair with the chilly Janey Carver (Sigourney Weaver). Bens wife Elena (Joan Allen) tries to make up
whatevers missing in her life by acting impulsively. The
Hoods daughter Wendy (Christina Ricci) explores her
newfound sexuality by behaving improperly with both of the
Carvers sons, Mikey (Elijah Wood) and Sandy (Adam
Hann-Byrd).

Within all this malaise, something has got to give. On the day
after Thanksgiving, as an ice storm approaches, the elder Hoods
and Carvers head to a wife-swapping party. Wendy makes her way to
the Carvers, and Mikey goes outdoors to explore. The events
that follow are tragic and inevitable.

Lee has made, with his solid ensemble cast, a deeply affecting
movie in The Ice Storm. The characters are wallowing in their own
problems; each one is too wrapped up in his own situation to
properly tend to the others. Each is trying to get some sort of
fulfillment, but the choices that are made are all destructive.
There is no real moral to what happens. It just is, and
thats why The Ice Storm sticks to you long after
youve left the theatre.

Telling Lies in America was written by noted smut auteur Joe
Eszterhas. But this is no Showgirls. Its a nice, small
coming-of-age movie based loosely on Eszterhas own
experiences as a Hungarian immigrant teen making his way in
Cleveland in the early Sixties.

Telling Lies stars Brad Renfro as Karchy Jonas, whose principled
father (played by Maximillian Schell) sends him to a rich-boy
private school, where he is ostracized. To achieve the American
Dream, Karchy develops a knack for lying. He ends nearly
everything he says with lots of times  as in,
ever driven? had sex? lots of times. This skill leads him to a
job with Billy Magic (Kevin Bacon), a radio deejay who drives a
flashy car, wears snazzy clothes, and dates lots of women. Billy
and Karchy make a perfect match. Billy introduces Karchy to an
exciting lifestyle, and Karchy acts as a go-between for
Billys record-company payoffs. Its only toward the
end that Karchy realizes that hes in way over his head.

While the movie is a bit too long and Karchys relationship
with an older woman (Calista Flockhart of Ally McBeal) seems off,
Telling Lies in America is a fine film. Renfro and Bacon both do good work. And, rare in an Eszterhas film, there is no nudity.